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The Campus Conversation: Little People Wrestling
As juniors and seniors remember, two years ago ASCMC threw party centered around a jello wrestling tournament. To those who don’t remember, I’m sure this sounds a like pretty standard CMC debauchery. However, at this particular party there was an unexpected surprise…
Little people wrestling. ASCMC paid an agency representing an assortment of little people to come to our fine campus and wrestle for the entertainment of all. Their brawl introduced a new debate to campus over ethics, economics, and morality, a debate we’re happy to revisit as we approach its two year anniversary.
Editor’s Note: This piece is the first in a recurring series of discussions of controversial campus issues. For the sake of argument, the authors were asked to creatively defend a position that they may not fully endorse.
Let Them Wrestle
By Ron Jeremy
By Ron Jeremy
Now amongst those who still cling to antiquated Victorian morals, little people jello wrestling evokes a response of pure disgust and outrage. A quick glance at my opponents post demonstrates this fact beyond reproach. But if we move beyond our visceral socially programmed response and analyze the situation with cold rationality, is it really that bad? Let’s apply some of that economic theory we all learned in ECON 50. The little person, by choosing to accept our 200 dollar appearance fee, is through implication claiming that he is better off in a world in which he/she is paid to jello wrestle. No force is involved. Now some of you might believe that they should not choose to subject themselves to such obvious humiliation. But this is paternalism at its worst. If they view their dignity to be worth under 200 dollars, who is anyone else to tell them otherwise?
Along these lines, many will trumpet the claim that we exploited and demeaned little people for our own benefit. They will argue that the little people are only choosing to do this because they have no other choice. I won’t bother even denying this. All jobs by their very nature are inherently exploitative. A job is an activity that you don’t enjoy, yet engage in anyway because the monetary benefits are overwhelming. We’re told as children to do what we love, but the cold fact remains that most people don’t. The accountant demeans himself when he chooses to crunch numbers instead of fly fish. Hell, I without a doubt demeaned myself when I worked at Chuck E. Cheese as a giant freaking mouse. Yet I chose to do it anyway, because the monetary compensation I received made it worthwhile. I question if I should even use a word as inherently pejorative as demean. Even extreme examples like a stripper or prostitute are simply people willfully performing a service for a small fee. If anyone is being taking advantage of, it’s the horny clientele, forever the prisoner of the brain below their waist.
Now thus far I have spent my time arguing in defense of the little people’s decision to engage in jello wrestling. Other people, however, will argue that the outrage lies on the other end of the transaction. They will yell at the top of their lungs that anyone who would gain any sort of enjoyment from watching this display is beyond sick. I couldn’t disagree more. We cannot control how we feel. If we find something entertaining, we find something entertaining. Trying to repress our feelings won’t do anything but maybe provoke a Freudian dream. So if enough people at CMC enjoy watching little people wrestle, we should embrace this reality.
In fact, given my initial arguments, trying to deny our feelings would hurt the little people as well. Not only would we be limiting our own entertainment, we would be preventing others from cashing in on something that they have already demonstrated to be in their best interest. In this situation, everyone is forced into a non-optimal outcome. And since utility is the only true metric of morality, I will contend for all to hear that not only is little people wrestling alright, it is in fact moral. Yes, all of you who partook in this “debaucherous” event two years ago, not only are you not a creep, like my opponent will contend, you were, in fact, looking down from a moral high ground.
Equal Respect No Matter the Height
By Cato
By Cato
Our opponents will argue that the right of contracts between individuals is sufficient grounds to justify our student government paying two little people to wrestle in jello for the pleasure of a crowd of inebriated college students. They misinterpret entirely the general problem represented by this event. The issue at hand is not at all whether the right of contract is generally valid, there is no disagreement there; it is whether we are right to make this contract in particular. It is our intention to demonstrate that our opponents’ argument is not consistent and that for this student body to condone and participate in such an exhibition is degrading to our own public image and sense of social responsibility. While our opponents treat these wrestlers as individuals in order to defend their right to contract, they neglect the fact that they have been hired by virtue of their membership in a certain minority group. If this were nothing more than a transaction between individuals why did we seek members of this group in specific? It is undeniable that it is the specific physical characteristics of little people that provide the entertainment that we look to derive from their wrestling in jello. This is a contract between individuals, but it is also much more. This is the subjugation of a minority group defined by its particular physical attributes by the majority for the express reason of those characteristics.
For such a large segment of our student body to so actively and so publicly participate in this oppression is despicable and disgusting. What if instead of little people in the ring instead we had hired two African-Americans to battle it out with spears and shields. The crowd surrounds them amused by their simulated savagery and tribalism. This is how the majority has always oppressed the minority. The specifics have been different but the result has always been the same; the majority exerts and expands its power over the minority by humiliating them and reasserting their inferiority. What this student body and our opponents are explicitly saying is that these people are nothing more than an amusement, not individuals at all. To assert the individual rights of people who you treat as less than human in other circumstances is inconsistent to the point of hypocrisy.
It is not wrong for us to hire others to perform for the sake of our personal entertainment, and it is not wrong for anyone to voluntarily humiliate themselves for the sake of others’ entertainment. What is wrong, egregiously and sickeningly wrong, is for us to voluntarily participate in the continued subjugation of a group of people for nothing more than some set of physical traits that they possess by chance.
Even if you find yourself unable to accept the fact that you are a heightist bastard there is at least one thing that is clear. The majority of society does consider “midget jello wrestling” to be hedonistic and discriminatory, and it has become a stereotype of idiotic college students to objectify women and dwarfs in this manner. It is not in our best interest as a college community to degrade ourselves by becoming the perfect example of what society finds wrong with frat-boy culture. I will not deny that there is a monetary benefit to the individual dwarfs who jello-wrestled, and I suppose some of us students took pleasure in the debasement of those wrestlers, but the costs to our image as a community, and the general costs to a society that still keeps short people from achieving on the same level as tall people are much greater.
For more arguments from these writers, see http://www.duelingdiatribes.com/
10 Comments
2009-04-06
00:37:34
Cato would endorse liberty in this situation. The self-proclaimed "Cato" here writes in a direct attack of Cato's principles, undermining the freedom of the market. When somebody is hiring entertainers, the person is the product. Choosing a product based on an intrinsic quality, such as size, is not offensive. A market economy allows this sort of decision, and we should allow people to contract for whatever services they see fit.
2009-04-06
01:06:18
The effect of an action on individuals the only meaningful standard of judgment. My opponent Cato speaks in terms of groups and ethnicity, ignoring that these entities are but social constructs. He posits hypothetical harm, I outline concrete benefit. By the end my friend you look like nothing more than a sniveling liberal snob...
2009-04-06
11:01:18
I think that Ron Jeremy and Cato are the same person. Meaning, I think one person wrote both posts!
2009-04-06
13:02:35
I'm not sure that you even know who Cato is "The Real Cato." But I'll leave that alone, and simply respond to your other arguments. I explicitly stated at the very beginning of my piece that I fully support the freedom of contract between individuals. Obviously a market economy allows for this sort of decision, and so do I. What I made clear in my piece is that merely because we are allowed to be a party in this contract, does not mean that it is justified that we do so. If you were to explain to me why the benefits of this transaction to society outweigh its costs then I might have something more to say to you on this point. As for your argument that "choosing a product based on an intrinsic quality, such as size, is not offensive" this is grievously incorrect. To demonstrate how ridiculous this statement is let me give an example. Say, for example, that our school was full of racists. We thought it was hilarious to make fun of black people for their intrinsic qualities. It would be even more funny if we had a black person to make fun of in person in public. We would like to now hire a "product" to be the butt of our jokes. Who will we hire? We our choosing this product based on an "intrinsic quality" specifically for the purpose of degrading and insulting that quality. The selection of the product is not independent of the use we plan to put it to, you cannot separate these two concepts. The use is offensive so the entire transaction is offensive.
As for Mr. Jeremy's added claim that the nature of these groups I define as mere social constructs renders my argument about group harm invalid, this is even more egregiously incorrect. Certainly these groups are just social constructs, but if you had read my argument more carefully you would realize that what I am opposed to is the very creation of these constructs. By objectifying these dwarfs, classifying their entire being by nothing more than some arbitrary characteristics, we are generating or at least perpetuating these constructs. We are defining all dwarfs as nothing more than a joke, and thereby insulting all of the members of this group. Surely even just an insult (especially when it becomes an insult to members of our own campus community) is enough reason to make it clear that this event was a mistake. But as I have argued this event was more than an insult, the very act of definition has a demonstrably negative effect on the lives of members of the defined group on our campus and in society as a whole.
And finally, Mr. Interested, no we are not the same person.
2009-04-06
13:11:27
You PPE kids have too much time on your hands
2009-04-06
14:23:19
Who knew a debate about
midgetlittle people wrestling could be so boring? If this is philosophy, I'm glad they killed Socrates.2009-04-07
21:41:45
Ron's argument shows why utilitarianism descends into relativism when you think seriously. He tries to use rational argument to show the impossibility of rational argument.
If it's true, as Ron suggests, that humans possess absolutely no control over themselves--that is, they are incapable of reasonable reflection on their actions and incapable of ranking what is better or worse--then there is absolutely no reason to try to persuade us to respect the freedom or rights of anybody to engage in any type of behavior. We will be compelled to violate others' freedom whenever we are carried away by whatever passions happen to be driving us. After all, "we cannot control how we feel."
If human being really is the mere expression of random and unintelligible passions, then there can be no reason to assert that repression is somehow inferior to expression of feelings. Who's to say? Why? Nor is it possible to assert that entertainment is somehow a good that "we should embrace." Why not endorse repression? Why not abuse the midgets while we're at it, if that pleases us after all? What if we "feel" or are entertained by repressing and tyrannizing others' feelings?
Thus Ron can't really assert that anything is in our "best interest," because he doesn't believe we can know what is in our "best interest" at all. For Ron, it's all about random desires. His attempt to equalize all pleasures really reveals that pleasure has no more value than any other type of feeling we might experience.
But if one allows a standard of human nature (and doesn't simply dismiss it out of a blind dogmatism), then one can actually make an argument about what actions are more human, or more fully human. These actions, I would speculate, point toward a rationality that makes us above the animal.
In that light, I think we would find that the more whorish we are, the more animalistic we are. We would probably find that human excellence is not derived from treating others like play things (even if we pay them), and we would probably find more satisfying, rational pleasures than being slaves to entertainment or "the brain below the waist."
Ron's idea of freedom makes us total slaves. We think we're free, but really we're just petty, calculating animals--"last men" to use Nietzsche's expression--who submit to egalitarian hedonism for no real reason than that we don't have the courage to live a different life.
A real freedom would allow us to pursue a life that is more fully exhibits our natural human capacities. Excellence, or the good life, would be our aim. Sure, out of practicality it might make sense to allow some rather crass contracts. But it's not fitting for a college directed toward enriching the life of the mind to indulge the animal spirits of lesser souls. We dehumanize the midgets by treating them as subrational beings, or props for our pleasing, and we dehumanize ourselves by suggesting that our basest desires are all we can be.
2009-04-07
22:05:24
Cato's argument shows why treating individuals as mere members of a group abstracts from the qualities that make them human. Arbitrary classifications become more important than character or excellence. This is a what affirmative action does very clearly--a point worth making in light of Charlie Sprague's recent piece. Affirmative action treats minorities as diversity props rather than as people capable of intellectual insight and academic excellence.
But while I agree with Cato that what makes the jello wrestling so disgusting was that it singled out a specific group for our cruel pleasure, I should point out that there are other ways to dehumanize people (even contractually) that do not place group identity above humanity. For instance, we could pay people to have sex in a cage in North Quad. Ron's logic would certainly say this is fine. But I think a higher sense of who we are would look down on such uninhibited libertarianism.
2009-04-09
22:11:23
pls bring the little people to campus! omg that would be awesome!
2009-08-25
15:14:02
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